Explaining the Unexpected: Political Science and the Surprises of 1989 and 2011

Abstract

Political scientists have been caught by surprise by some of the world’s most dramatic political transformations. To assess how the discipline fared in explaining two of the most large-scale and unexpected developments of the past decades, we compare scholarship around the time of popular mobilization in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Arab world in 2011. We argue that while scholars cannot be expected topredictutterly extraordinary events such as revolutions and mass mobilization, in these two cases disciplinary trends left scholars ill-prepared toexplainthem. Political scientists used similar paradigms to study both regions, emphasizing their failure to develop politically and economically along the lines of Western Europe and the United States. Sovietologists tended to study the communist bloc as either anomalously totalitarian or modernizing towards “convergence” with the West. Likewise, political scientists studying the Arab world focused disproportionately on the prospects for democratization or the barriers to it, and they now risk treating the 2011 protest movements essentially as non-events if they are not clearly tied to institutional democratic reform. By broadening their research agendas beyond a focus on regime type, political scientists will be better prepared to understand future changes in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Authoritarian Wager: Political Action and the Sudden Collapse of Repression

“…It was because of this assumption that even as late as May 1988, the intelligence services estimated only a remote to low likelihood of serious challenges to Party control in Eastern Europe over the next 5 years. This was the consensus among academic Sovietologists as well (Howard & Walters, 2014).…”

Brexit! Grexit? Frexit? Considerations on How to Explain and Measure the Propensities of Member States to Leave the European Union

“…Only three UK-wide referendums have been held to date, two of which were on the question of EU membership. 3 Nevertheless, it is inconceivable that the decision to leave the EU would be taken without a clear expression of the will of the people, if not in the form of a referendum then, for example, through a single-issue general election or widespread mass protests, which can lead to sudden and unexpected political transformations (Howard and Walters 2014).…”

Critical Geopolitics and the Framing of the Arab Spring Through Late‐Night Humor*

“…The events termed the Arab Spring took place in North Africa and Southwest Asia and many scholars were surprised (Gause, ; Goodwin, ; Howard and Walters, :398), perhaps blinded by theoretical paradigms. Experts on the region specifically cited the lack of democratic practices, the burgeoning youth population, growing popular unrest, and the lack of economic growth and opportunities as contributing causes (Howard et al., ).…”